Music for the Days of Awe
Every holiday has its own special and unique qualities that differentiate it from other holidays. For example- we eat latkes for Chanukah, we wave a lulav and etrog for Sukkot, we eat matzah for Passover, we recite the Ten Commandments on Shavuot and we eat apples and honey for Rosh Hashanah. In addition to specific foods and activities, each holiday also has its own special and unique melodies and liturgy.
This is especially true for the Days of Awe—Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. These holy days have their own texts and sounds that truly make them different from the rest of the year. Many of the prayers have the same words as in other services (Barechu, Shema, Amidah, Mi Chamocha, etc), but they have their own special melodies or motifs that only occur for the High Holidays. That is part of what makes Jewish worship unique.
Every holiday, every day and time of day has its own special sounds. Even Shabbat evening and morning have different melodies. You can close your eyes and walk into almost any synagogue and know where you are in the Jewish calendar by the melodies you hear.
Rabbi Cy and I are working very hard to ensure that everyone is comfortable with the new Machzor we will begin using for 5778. Part of that is making sure all the special High Holiday melodies are familiar to everyone. We began this practice several years ago by posting videos on the TBM YouTube channel of me singing all the new-to-TBM High Holiday melodies. I know many of you have taken advantage of these video tutorials.
We want to assure you that all of the melodies that you have come to expect over the past 5+ years will be used with the new Machzor to engender full participation. This Machzor also includes some new readings and liturgy that were not part of our previous Machzor. We will be introducing some of these new readings and new songs- some of which may or may not be familiar to you.
High Holiday melodies:
L'shalom
Cantor Marnie cantor@bethmiriam.org
